Wednesday, January 4, 2012

HOT: Did Ron Paul Just Win Iowa?

By Timothy Carney

"I think Ron Paul just won Iowa," declared Mark Hansen, Ron Paul's Pottawattamie County coordinator. Here at a bar serving as the unofficial county headquarters of the Paul campaign, Hansen had just conceded that Paul would not win the popular vote in Iowa, but he also pointed out that after the straw polls, the precincts appointed delegates to the county conventions in March -- and that in every precinct in Pottawattamie, at least, two or three Ron Paul supporters volunteered to be delegates, and few other candidates' supporters volunteered.

Delegates at the county conventions help select delegates to the state convention, which then select delegates to the Republican National Convention.

18 comments:

I love Ron Paul, but on the other hand I think that for real change to take place, the Neo-cons and Progressives need to finish the job they started of economically collapsing the country. I actually kind of hope for an all Dem victory so that the job can get done faster -- good for gold too. The public needs to experience the collapse in order to bring about real change. Once the collapse occurs there will be a true repulsion by the public towards big government and the welfare/warfare state like the world has never seen.

Psft... at our caucus the "leader" was speaking so softly the Ron Paul supporter huddled in a corner with a few others helping to count the votes didn't even know the opportunity to volunteer had passed.

1) Not going to happen. There's no time for that now. And Ron Paul simply won't run again. Even if he would, people would start questioning whether he's to old to run the country for the next 4+4 years.

2) If a complete collapse comes, there's a great risk for a totalitarian (or at least extremely socialistic) form of government. And we don't need another Hitler in this world.

Now you know why the Establishment has supported the Kochtopus/CATO/Reason crowd over all these years!

Those guys (the Establishment) are GOOD! (at what they do).

The theme will be ... Paul is an eccentric, not a true libertarian ... Johnson is a true Libertarian ... he will get the Libertarian Party nomination and provide a rational Libertarian alternative ... NOT the quirky, homophobic, racist, pro-life, inconsistent, etc., etc. Paul..

Anon @ 11:10If Russia is a precident to judge by conditions hardly improved for the people after the collapse. Sure the technology developed by entrepreneurs in computing, mobiles, automobiles and innovations in the service economy have enriched Russians as they have us all but the corruption and cronyism remains as strong as ever. Nearly every single Russian billionaire is ex-KGB or formerly from some high ranking arm of the state apparatus. A collapse in America would be no different, Goldman Sachs, JPM and all the various finance, defence and media oligarchs would consolidate power like never before.

Anon 12:59 what I am referring to by "the collapse" is not something on the scale of one country but globally. The collapse of the Soviet Union is small in comparison to what is coming. We have several cycles, some far, far older then the Communist revolution, coming together over the next three years. I'm also not so delusional to beleive that this won't be without extreme suffering for everyone and that certain evil people will rise up as a result. My point that was not well made is that a Paul administration would not stop what is coming but certainly run the risk of being blamed by the elites as the reason behind the collapse. The important thing is that people will know what the problem is as a result of Paul's 2012 Presidential campaign that puts this topic front and center. Back in 2008, Paul's message was considered on the fringe by most people. By 2015 he will look like a prophet.

Americans are now too stupid to be free and seek external authorities like most sheeple in the world so a total collapse would result in a Mafia-style takeover similar to what we have now and closer to what Russia has. A Ron Paul win would never change this because Democracy ALWAYS results in total destruction. The global political terrorists will do everything including murdering millions of humans to keep ownership of their tax livestock. America will never be free again.

Yes, the collapse is coming. But I don't see a scary police state coming over the horizon. I see a scary police state, and global empire, right here right now.

And I see the Deep State/Power Elite, whatever, panicking. Obama's term has been a disaster. In the USA, we were supposed to happily embrace the transition into explicit socialism. The Europeans were supposed to rush into a full fledged 'United States of Europe.' We were all supposed to freak out about global warming and set up a One World Government (err, mechanism for global governance) administered by the IMF and Goldman Sachs.

Actually, the collapse of the USSR improved lives of people there enormously - especially compared to the final stages of "well-developed socialism" of post-Brezhnev era.

If you look at the period from 91 to 01 - the virtual absence of any "law enforcement" (and resulting universal tax evasion and total disregard to regulations) were responsible for incredible economic boom. The country with completely depleted capital stock, on a brink of hunger, and with population which had seen generations of brutal selection for conformity and mediocrity became a decent place to live in. In mere 10 years.

The only people there who claim that life before the collapse was as good or better are either senile fools with nostalgia for the times when they were younger, or brainwashed Putinista youngsters who were born after the collapse or are too young to have any memories of life in the USSR.

that may well be the truth ( I belive it is) but the Democrats and Obama aren't interested in the truth and they will use Ron Paul's past newsletters to portray Ron Paul as a racist and the American press will be more than willing to help them do that. They will line up all the race baters on the Sunday news shows and they'll go over those newsletters piece by piece, Sunday after Sunday. When they get done they will have protrayed Ron Paul as the grand wizard. Sorry but those newsletters make Ron Paul a flawed candidate. Now if we had an impartial free press it could be different. But we don't. What will Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Bill Mahar, Saturday Night live, David Letterman do to Ron Paul. Within 30 days they'll have have the nation thinking Ron Paul "Can see Russia" from his bunker. Can't you just hear it now?

Don´t worry about aborting a collapse. Paul Craig Roberts and others have said in effect, Which ever candidate is elected it won´t reverse the course we´re on (until it´s run its course) A Ron Paul victory will set a new course and return us (maybe not overnight) to government which must observe constitutuional restraints when the recovery comes. This presupposes that the people led by Paul won´t permit elitists to retain nor regain control of government and other institutions they have controled. Be patient. You´ll get your collapse.

While I would love to see what happened in Iowa take place in all 50 states, it won't. Now that the media has brought it up, expect the republican state chairs to make damn certain that no more Paul supporters are on any of the nomination committees. The fix is in and it's not going to be sidetracked.

The collapse will happen either way. There actually isn't anything Gov't can do about it. However, if the Dems are elected across the board it will be drug out for much longer and be far worse when it happens.We need a strong leader like Ron so we can purge the system quickly and then get it back on track.

I don't share the enthusiasm for a total collapse. My fear is that if we have not already gone past the point of no return, 4 more years of Obama will assure that America will be a completely socialist country. The takers will simply outvote the producers until they run out of other people's money.

If the media and political elite continue to criticize Ron Paul for attaching his name to newsletters of 20 years ago which he hadn't read and now disavows, then Paul and his supporters should take every opportunity to point out that Congress routinely passes legislation such as the Patriot Act and more recently the NDAA which many attach their names to but don't bother to read. Which has been more destructive to liberty and civilized life, the former or the latter?

They should also repeatedly ask the media busybodies out for Ron Paul's blood why the watchdog media's thunderous silence as the Bill Of Rights is eviscerated by liberty's enemies in Congress. Their treatment of Ron Paul tells us a lot about the true mission of liberty's "watchdogs." These "watchdogs" are too busy chasing a few flies to notice that burglars are driving off with the contents of the house! Perhaps the Ron Paul campaign can even do a clever ad pointing out this monumental failure.